How is the Surface 3 standby battery?

[Nikos Lygidakis]

So any feedback of installing the above update, is it safe to install? Is it meant for our S3 or just for SP4/SB?

 

[oditius]

I don't use my Surface 3 much while I am at home. And no money to go on vacation, so it sits and does nothing. (I use my 17" laptop 99.99% of the time) I do take it out to update once in a while. But while I was testing the battery and other stuff, i have had better battery performance, faster speed and more control. That update can do more, but it only shows you one thing. While you are adding the high performance, look at the other adjustments before you restore your registry back to the way it was. There are a few more things that can be adjusted to increase speed. Please don't ask, I didn't write it down, and I don't remember things the way I use to years and years ago. lol

 

[GizmoEV]

So any feedback of installing the above update, is it safe to install? Is it meant for our S3 or just for SP4/SB?

Given that the driver installed without a problem (normally the install would fail if it won't work) and has been working just fine I'd say it is safe. The blog referenced is only about the SP4/SB some of the same components can be in other devices. One comenter on the blog said:

E. Swoope
November 30, 2015 at 6:34 pm

I have done this with my Surface Pro 3, Surface 3, and Dell Venue 8 Pro. We shall see what happens! Had to do all three of them manually.

As you can see he even installed the drivers on a Dell product which makes sense since NEC makes the hardware used.

 

[LibbyLA]

"He" is a "she" .

I've lost the battery indicator on the Dell Venue 8 Pro running Windows 10 but I don't know if it was the battery driver or not. No problem with the S3, haven't used my SP3 since then. I do know that my battery didn't discharge much at all in 6 days after a full charge and power down.

 

[Dewg]

I've found a good battery saver on standby:

Given default power settings - go to an Admin Command Prompt and type: POWERCFG -H -TYPE FULL
Then restart
Now go into Control Panel and Power Options
Go into Advanced Power Options - and you'll have access to a new Sleep category - set Hibernation to 120 mins (default 240 mins).

Your Surface will hibernate after 2 hours - saving a good amount of battery - also, with a much larger hibernation file, it recovers from hibernation faster. If you have passwords disabled, it'll wake directly to the desktop (or Start Menu)

 

[LibbyLA]

I have rolled back the battery driver on the Dell Venue 8 Pro. Couldn't deal with the lost battery indicator since I never know how much battery I had or whether it was fully charged. Rollback worked great and in just a second or two my battery indicator popped right back up. Didn't lose the battery indicator on the SP3 or S3, but they are running Win 8.1.

 

[andraeseus]

I just bought one for my wife for Christmas. Can you put some instructions for what you did to improve performance so I can do it for her as well?

Mine came with W10. I don't mind the power consumption. I just hated the lag. But with the registry hack and max performance, there is no more lag. It is almost as quick as my i7 laptop. I have a 30,000mAh backup power bank that I can use on the road,,,

 

[mikelino666]

Hi guys, i've just read something interesting about the standby mode..
https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/28q496/question_about_connected_standby_on_sp3/

I would like to summarize the post ( maybe some of you already know this stuff but i'm sure that could be useful for others)..so:
With the surface, there are two different standby mode. 1, normal standby; 2 connected standby
With the normal standby, the use of the surface it's like the same of your previous pc, it means that this function is gonna help you to save battery and wake up the surface in the fastest possible way but, once woken up, it is going to update all the app (so it's like it was switched off). The consumption per hour should be less than 1%. You can start this function with the normal options.
2 The connected standby: it's like the standby of our smartphone or tablets like apple and android. It means that the surface is in standby but it is still connected to download mail, news, and other thinks from the web ONLY for the apps, not programs (not desktop app i mean). With this one setting you will loose around 1-2% per hour.
This is not gonna works with torrent software like utorrent that isn't an app. Thus, to use program like utorrent or to download stuff with browser etc.., the best solution should be to create to profile battery settings, one with the options of the standby ON (after, i don't know, 5 minutes) and one with no standby mode to keep on downloading the stuff that u need (don't forget to move from one to an other because, with the standby off, even if you close the case or press the button, isn't going to go in standby mode).
This could be useful for people that would like save more power in standby mode (so take of the connected standby) or for people that need to download stuff (so take off the standby mode and keep on working on the surface with only the screen switched off).

The only one doubt that i still have is: when i close the cover on the screen, or when i press the power button, the tablet is going to standby mode? or it is only going to switch off the screen? Because there's an option in power setting that you can set to going in standby after, for example 5 minute. In this situation i saw that utorrent is still working for 5 minutes so i thing that is not going in standby what i close the cover.

Sorry for the long message but i hope that it could help people to understand the functionality of the surface standby mode.

P.S. Don't forget that after 4 hrs of standby the surface is going to hibernation mode to save more power ( to change it you need to write something in the register). cheers

 

[oditius]

I just bought one for my wife for Christmas. Can you put some instructions for what you did to improve performance so I can do it for her as well?

I don't remember what I exactly did, but follow the instructions in this thread and you can create a performance power plan. But take it a step farther and check out the other adjustments you can do while there before you restore the registry.

http://forums.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-3/393158-power-management-settings-article.html

 

[undulose]

Hello guys, new Surface 3 owner here. Actually, I do not have problems with its battery life. I mean, there didn't come anytime that I ran out of battery before night with mixed usage. I also do not experience slow charging... But I cannot give numbers yet.

Btw, I updated the battery drivers since day 1.

 

[eagle63]

New Surface 3 owner here as well and I'm shocked at how bad the battery life while "sleeping" is. I lose a solid 4% per hour when it's asleep. I haven't loaded any oddball drivers nor messed with any registry settings. (nor do I want to, BTW) I tried disabling the "stay connected to wifi while asleep" setting, and while it did seem to help it had the nasty side effect of not re-enabling my WiFi connection when the computer wakes back up. (another flaky windows 10 bug I guess?)

 

[Jens Ansorg]

P.S. Don't forget that after 4 hrs of standby the surface is going to hibernation mode to save more power ( to change it you need to write something in the register). cheers

Don't mess with the registry! You can change this in power settings in classic control panel